Technology for Social Change and Development Initiative

Stage 5: Scaling

In At the inaugural pilot program (Code4Impact), we directly trained 70 girls and women in Lagos Nigeria and went on to directly train over 1,800 girls and women across Nigeria under the Nigerian Women Techsters program over the last year.

Solution

The Women Techsters initiative is focused on bridging the gender gap between men and women in the technology space. By 2030, the initiative seeks to enable 5,000,000 women across Africa with digital and tech skills that will equip them to drive social and innovative change within their communities by providing access to decent jobs (full time jobs and remote jobs within the gig economy), and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Target Beneficiaries

The Women Techsters initiative is focused on serving girls and women between the ages of 16 to 40 across Africa.

Innovation Description

Our solution, is targeted at women with the aim of build an inclusive eco system with more women taking active roles in creating solutions for innovation and social issues. We will be training women in the following learning tracks: With a robust curriculum, we will be training women across these tracks; Web development Games development Embedded system Data science Artificial Intelligence The women will be trained for 2-6 weeks depending on the learning track and afterwards, they will go on a 10 week internship or 3 months incubation program depending on whether they are on the technology job track or business track. With exposure to incubation and internships, it is expected that the women will receive adequate life exposure to technology and would eventually get jobs and build sustainable businesses in the technology industry. Our long-term vision is to create an Africa where women have access to decent jobs in technology, lead tech driven startups, drive technology driven innovation around Africa and beyond

Competitive Advantage

Over 5 million women across Africa, between ages 16-40 years will be empowered with digital skills for a period of 3 Months, with internship and incubation opportunities for beneficiaries to harness and develop their career and business ideas over a 10 year period. We are also very intentional about ensuring that through the program, the women develop solutions using technology to address one key social issue within their communities.
This will foster ownership of tech driven startups run/owned by women
Our unique solution is intentional towards ensuring that 70% of the beneficiaries get technology focused jobs and the remaining 30% start technology and technology enabled businesses.

Planned Goals and Milestones

Within the first year of implementation, our goal is to deploy the Women Techsters training in 3 countries(Ghana, Kenya and Mauritus) train 300,000 women with digital literacy skills. Also within this time, we will recruit 1 national coordinator per country and 36 local volunteers who will take responsibility for the initiative within their local jurisdiction. Our estimated indirect impact is estimated at 1,000,000 people across 3 African countries.